Those one-time hellraisers the Young British Artists are today more likely to be found making noise complaints to the local council than sliding down the bannisters at the Groucho Club. But in his part-historical, part-satirical, part-autobiographical debut novel Art, Peter Carty returns to their heyday as he charts the birth of the movement that shook up the art world in the early 1990s.

The setting is a now unrecognisable Hoxton and Shoreditch, devoid of puppy yoga studios and oat milk lattes. In the opening chapter, the principal characters meet in a grimy old pub to celebrate a private view at the nearby gallery, Idiot Savant. Here they discuss the most innovative works being produced in London: a series of blank books displayed on lecterns within a spacious vitrine. ‘Everyone thought it was brilliant.’

The Damien Hirst-inspired artist Kevin Thorn has hit the big time after Death, his show featuring donated body parts, secured him a contract with a major commercial gallery. Becky Edge’s works are also attracting critical attention – the video of her walking down a street, after all, ‘deals with complex, messy conceptual ideas in a neat and witty way’. Meanwhile, Tania Russell‑Smith’s magnum opus shows her making love to 35 men in succession.

The fulcrum is Idiot Savant’s curator, Alastair Given, around whom the others pivot – though this is due more to his access to cocaine than any prowess as a curator. Desperate to break into the circle is the narrator, Billy McCrory, a fledgling art critic, who, after accidentally becoming the last person to interview Francis Bacon, is on the hunt for his next scoop. Trying to please, he agrees to look after a ‘package’ for Alastair, and soon finds himself in the crosshairs of both gangsters and the police.

The novel captures the hedonism of the time – the gaps and jumps in the narrative suggesting drug‑fuelled amnesia – and also its utter pretension and self-importance. The characters are unpleasant, and it features one of the worst sex scenes committed to paper. It all culminates in an exclusive, invitation-only show that is, quite literally, shit.

For those immersed in the art world it reads more like a documentary than fiction; yet there is something irresistible about the dirty, depraved world it presents. Our narrator admits that art had ‘attached itself insistently to his thoughts and feelings, and held him fast in its fever’. He is not alone.